tj_rowe | Entries tagged with cookery

Lolsob: This chronicillnesscat macro.

But today, I did do things!

Up until about half four this afternoon, it looked like there wasn't anything happening today. I'd breakfasted, had a late lunch and read some fanfic (okay, a lot of fanfic). However, this morning I had decided that I wanted baked beans on toast for breakfast, and there were no baked beans.

And so, a quest was decided - I would cycle to Morrisons, along the osbaldwick/fifth av/st. nicolas fields cycle trail (because the detour down the hill to osbaldwick was worth it to not having to cycle along 'real' roads), and buy some damned baked beans. And all those other things which you get from Morrisons but don't need to buy very often, like Rington's tea. And cheap cleaning fluid. And gluten-free frozen pizza. And a small casserole dish, as opposed to the HUGE one that I have and takes a lot to wash. And-

I did it! I got on my bike with my larp backpack, and cycled along in the sun along the cycle path, dodging dogs and small children, until I got to Morrisons to do my shopping.

And then I got distracted by all the hair stuff and makeup in the 'reduced to clear' section. I like 'reduced' makeup - I feel less guilty buying it than full price, and I do like owning things to doll myself up with.

But I did do my shopping, and it fit into my rucksack (except for one bulky light thing, which I slung around the handlebars), and cycling back the bottom of the rusksack was resting on the pannier rack, so didn't feel very heavy (except that it was a significant enough change in mass that F=ma became more relevent than usual, and the front of my shoulders).

And now I am making a one-person amount of beef stroganoff in my new casserole dish! Okay, it'll be a 'hungry one person' amount, but it won't require two people to eat. It will contain beef and all the spices (in the oven already) and there are chopped a parsnip, two carrots, half a green pepper, and three chestnut mushrooms. Also half a brocolli, but that's not going in the main thing - I think I shall boil a few potatoes and steam the brocolli above them. In an hour or so.

( Read more... )

Also: Every single one of you, food is good, and required for life. Do not answer wrong to the 'eat or die' ultimatum, or there will be Words.

Or rather, I went swimming for twenty minutes or so until I got bored, then I realised that the outdoor pool wasn't all that full, so spent the rest of the hour in there. ^_^

Or rather, in the outdoor pool I went 'ooh, sun', and tried to swim (no goggles) and sunbathe at the same time, until my shoulders ached. and then I got out of the pool and sat in the sun for a while.

I also achieved revision when sat in the cafe drinking my water. And then after another hour or so, though 'why not?' and went up to the gym for more exercise! I did 1250 meters on the urgometer, in seven minutes. ^_^

And then I went shopping and went home, tired and achy in a good way, for once. Also I bought vegetables. And babybel. Om nom.

Current Mood: calm

I think I may need to rewrite my food rules. Currently, I've got it as a rule that I don't leave the house or do anything strenuous until I've had breakfast - or at least had easily nommable food with me, like an apple and breakfast bar or something. When I had to go far from my house in the morning and would often feel dizzy before I got another chance to eat, this was a good rule, because getting dizzy is bad. It was also a good rule because tbh, I was hungry when I needed to eat.

The past couple of weeks - it's been a bit of a creep, but has become more and more apparent - this rule has meant that I've sat in my pyjamas reading the internet and maybe drinking tea until I felt hungry, and then my day would start. This is extremely inefficent, time-wise, especially as later in the day/evening I'm a lot lazier and time seems to go faster. So, I'm going to trial a model of the day in which I set an alarm and Do Something at/close to home before breakfast/after just a yogurt or something - going to the shop, washing my hair, maybe even going for a walk or something that's almost-exercise-but-not-quite. (I have a set of light wrist/ankle weights - trying to start being stronger would make me hungry, right?)

And now it's occurring to me that on University days last term I'd eat something to fulfil the 'rule' before leaving the house (like a yogurt or half-bowl of cereal or some fruit), and then have a 'proper' fried breakfast later on at Roger Kirk - more like a brunch, really - after doing a lecture or some problem questions. So, my current way of organising is just substituting 'more sleep' or 'internet' for 'actually doing some work'. I was finding, in the later part of last term, that I was finding the days I woke up on campus to be the most productive, especially when I had late lectures, because I had to be out by nine o'clock and frequently only had the 'breakfast' at about half-past ten when Graham or James appeared and I could give them the bits of breakfast special that were made of wheat. That's an hour and a half-ish a day of being productive, so between three and four and a half hours a week of work (or attempted work) which wouldn't have gotten done otherwise.

So, yeah, I'll try that. I kinda wish I'd resolved this earlier in the holiday... One week (and three hours) until my exam...

Current Mood: contemplative

Looking at it from a certain way, the last half a week has been productive, because I came out of the end of it roasting parsnips in the oven.

From any other perspective, the fact that that's the only thing I've achieved (aside from tea, MSN, and Being Right On The Internet)... doesn't paint that picture at all.

I'm tired and hungry.

Current Mood: tired

Actually having quite a stock of bloke-clothes from over the years - the shirt which I wore as much as possible for that phase in sixth form, socks, t-shirts that don't go 'here thar be boobs!' and the trousers I wear for larp which came from the Matalan men's section. Also, trainers. Haven't worn trainers in a while.

Stew! I am cooking stew. If any Yorkites want to appear at my house and be fed stew, feel free, because I am cooking stew. Possibly let me know that you mean to do so, first, however. The lid went on at two o'clock, so it'll be ready at about six and properly done at about eight.

Having purchased things, and be planning to purchase more things! New things are good. Waiting for things to arrive in the post is happy-making. Yay, internets!

I have my blanket back, though it is not cleaned yet. Any tips on cleaning sick off of/out of alpaca wool? It's a very... fibrous blanket. I really don't want to wreck it!

Getting the food bought from Tesco and retrieved from Steve's family's house into my cupboards was a struggle, but I managed, using the art of clever tessellation. While I was at it, I organised all of my cupboards, and discovered that I have a rediculous number of glass ramekins, even with five of them being in the fridge containing cheating!creme brulee. I reckon I'll keep somewhere between six and ten, so if anyone else wants any of the rest (another eight or nine), tell me and I can cart them over or you can pick them up or I can bring them along to the 1318 meeting.

As an aside, the 'Cornish' Tesco custard doesn't pretend very well when cooked. The co-op own brand custard worked much better. I have got a much better method now for the crispy top - cooking the brulees in the oven (on about 170) for twenty-five minutes, then sugaring the tops and switching on the grill (on my cooker, the grill is the roof of the oven, might be different for others) so that the oven is still hot, the brulees are still hot, and suddenly MORE HOT is descending from above. The sugar burnt really well - but I should have used more sugar on some of them.

I can hardly wait for tonight. I want socialness! I want to be reassured that I'm not a terrible person for breaking up with my boyfriend! I want to make loads of dessert and then have other people enjoy it!

(I have a tub of falling apart ex-frozen mixed berries in the fridge, and need to do something with them today. I am thinking of making them flavour flapjack, or perhaps cake, or crumble. Crumble is fiddly and doesn't contain nearly enough not-fruit things, though. Any ideas, particularly from people I will see in the next couple of days?)

Current Mood: productive

So, Alex's flatmates go skipping, and have obtained large quantities of cabbage, parsnip, and potatoes (less of the potatoes - they've been in that box a bit long, I think). As they all have to be out of their rooms by tomorrow morning, these ingredients have been passed onto me as I'm staying in York, and so I must do something with them.

Stew contains all of these things plus meat and swede and onion, and I'm sure that parsnip soup is allowed though making it tasty might be a bit beyond me. Roasted parsnips in maple syrup make the best dessert ever if you're in the mood for it.

I have about eight large parsnips and a cabbage and a half - please give me some ideas of what to do with them!

Current Mood: awake

I just did the clever thing that one can do with a headache and few spoons for organising oneself (apparently I go by the coloured spoons theory. Hmm.) - order takeaway. The internet contains a menu, my computer contains a notepad, and I can talk to strangers on the phone when I tell myself that they want to take the effort to understand me so that I can give them money, so it's a lot easier than hunting down rice, and boiling water, and picking spices and cooking lentils and frozen veg, and frying some things, and counting minutes, and remembering salt, and such to make curry myself.

Customer mode, it solves so many problems.

Current Mood: tired

I am cooking. I am cooking tasty food, and enough of it that there will be leftovers for tomorrow. I need to stop inflicting tired upon myself - I get the 'need to do once a week' things done, but not the 'need to do once a day'. I showered and did washing and then it was half three and I'd only eaten a breadroll and drunk three cups of tea. And then I wondered why I was panicking and crazy. I ate some pasta about half way through chatting with my new housemate (she's a physicist!), and we were there in the living room until it got dark, and I was very hungry but didn't feel I could just get up and leave her there.

I'm cooking pilau, which is made of rice and frozen vegetables and onion and potato and spicy, and I had nice talking via MSN. I am tired. At least I will have food in a couple of minutes, and I am happy, and have things to squee about.

Current Mood: content

I'm making onion bahjis from scratch!

Ingredients:

Gram/Chickpea flour - 3 teaspoons per 'small' onion
5 small onions - actually 2 medium-sized brown onions, a small brown onion, and a small red onion - chopped into thin quarter-rings
some tomato puree
bit of water to make paste
pinch baking powder (because I add that to Yorkshire Pud recipes too)

cumin
coriander
sweet spice (recipe said use ginger, but ginger isn't my favourite, so I used half ginger and half cinnamon) - half as much as other spices
chilli (half as much as other spice)

Fry the onions in a saucepan until they were soft, add approx half of each spice (all the chilli and sweet spice, though) and the tomato puree, then chuck the whole lot on top of the gram flour and baking powder and rest of spice in the mixing bowl. Stir until you remember that the water was supposed to go in at this point, too, then add that and it turns into batter, like magic!

Mine are baking in the oven right now, so I don't know whether they turn into food or not. I'm cooking them in a yorkshire pudding/bun tray, having done the trick of warming oil in the bottom of each bit before putting the batter in.

Have turned them over so that all of each of them gets a turn in the oil. If there are any left, I'll bring them along to larp tomorrow - mostly to serve as lunch for me.

ETA: They're food!

Current Mood: content

I slept for most of the day, in a kind of 'awake a couple of hours, start aching again, snooze a couple of hours' pattern. I started cooking real food (bolognaise) at about eight, and by half-nine-ish when I got about half-way through the plateful I felt a lot better - not well enough to go to social, but well enough to consider it. By the 3 days rule of colds, tomorrow will probably also be fairly awful, but it should shift over the weekend. *fingers crossed*

I'll need to go into Uni tomorrow, anyway, even if it's just to hand in the little work I've done. I'd like to get to my lectures as well, but we'll see. I'm so, so glad that I get days off.

*sigh*

For about twenty minutes there, I thought I was going to manage. I'd gotten to the point of realising that my body wanted me to lie down for at least an hour or so, I needed to have food and I wanted to go to larp, but not all of these could occur in the time I had available. The crash/lie-down could not be averted until after larp, but I thought my body might be appeased if I lied down for an hour and then went, resulting in me being a little late and probably trying to beg a lift to get home, but also resulting in me not getting food first, which would make a proper crash more likely.

Then! I had an idea! (From Paul's comment that I should eat breakfast three times a day.) I could eat cereal for my tea, and that's possible while lying down in bed! (I've done it first thing in the morning before, when in a complete no-I'm-not-facing-the-day mood. Then I would be fed, and have lay down, and have time to go to larp! Yay! So I did that, and yes, my head stopped pounding and the aching in my limbs receded, and also I was fed. And then I tried to sit up and woah, dizzy, also the headache was back and no, I still wasn't going anywhere.

Turns out that combining the lie-down with other things results in a much less effective lie-down... *rolleyes*

So now, not very many hours after showering and hunting down clean clothes, I'm back in my pyjamas, have had an hour's actual lie-down, a strepsil and a yoghurt, am drinking hot squash and trying not to stand up too much. I would be back in bed, but I don't want to do the thing of being wide awake at 0400 because of being too rested in the early evening. Am thinking of cooking something that could then be eaten for a couple of days, but tomorrow I'll probably eat at Derwent or Vanbrugh again before social, so it would be a bit of a wasted effort. I could make bahjis or tasty coconut flapjack, I guess, as they're portable and stuff. Maybe not bahjis tonight, as I'd be making it up as I went. I have made spicy chicken coating from scratch recently, and that was good...

In reality, I'm probably not going to get up from this chair, and any 'cooking' will be using the kettle and a mug, not the oven or a saucepan. Also I need to wash up the saucepan from where I cooked pasta in it. Rice pasta gets weirdly frothy with starch, so it actually does require washing.

Current Mood: sick

I cooked stew again. Yay for not having any morning lectures - I could go to the butcher's to buy some stewing beef, prep all the veg and stick it in the slow cooker before I went off to my afternoon lecture, AND have a lie-in first!

...I seem to be having more and more trouble getting off to sleep these days. I hope it's not the meds.

Anyway, stew! Today I put in half a sweet potato, but apparently they have a much shorter cooking time to everything else in the pot (potato, carrot, parsnip, swede), because the chunks completely fell apart. Tasty, though. And then I had leftover cheating!creme-brulee for afters.

And I've got plenty of stew left over for tomorrow!

The presence of the slow-cooker in my kitchen has cut the amount of money I spend on food right down. Mostly because I'm actually cooking all the veg I get in a timely manner, just because a stew and a stir-fry each week is like half a week's worth of dinner for bloody cheap. And then I'll balance that out my eating on campus a couple of days (though not so much this term - less late lectures) a week, or having a ready meal. Since Tesco, I now have the ability to make sandwiches and toast, also.

Net result: I am consuming enough food to live on! Yay! This is an achievement and a step towards being Well, you guys!

Current Mood: content

Except, I cheated, then got impatient, then got creative.

The cheating: instead of heating cream and sugar, adding egg yolk and vanilla extract and whisking the result, I bought some 'fresh vanilla custard' and microwaved it for two minutes.

The impatience: Brulees went in the oven, fine, came out of the oven, fine, cooled down, fine. Except, then it was time to put them in the fridge for an hour to overnight. I... kinda wanted some dessert, right now, so ate one of them right there. It's weird warm and without the crunchy top.

After about ten minutes of fridging, I decided that, actually, I fancied another one, so I sprinkled sugar over the top and stuck it under the grill (an accepted alternative to the flamethrower). The sugar didn't caramelise, but the brulee started bubbling (I had put some fruit in the bottom, because if Keira can manage it, so can I!), so I pulled it out again...

The creative: I got the box of matches from upstairs, added a bit more sugar, tipped the thing sideways and held a match along the top until it started to go a bit brown. Success!

...It still counts as success when you have to fish a burned-out match-head from your dessert, right?

Current Mood: content

I think Tuesdays are going to be Good, organisation-wise. Today I had a 09:15 which never happened, because the lecturer never showed up, followed by breakfast in the RKC, then a StatMech lecture which was quite awesome, then I walked with James to the costcutter to buy a red pepper and some mayonnaise, and then I went to Hes Post Office to pay the next instalment of the water bill, and then I went home and that was my morning!

Then I mixed the mayonnaise with ketchup to make pink mayonnaise and stirred in the prawns I bought the other day and ate that with crispbreads for my lunch, and then I washed up things and then chopped up things until I had chopped all the things to turn into curry. Except, before I chopped the things, I mixed up half a coconut block with boiling water, because as far as I've been told, that's required for making curry.

Ingredients!

1 potato
quarter swede
two carrots
half a red pepper
100g coconut block + 400ml hot water
half a packet of casserole beef
a small brown onion

spices: cumin, coriander, turmeric, paprika, pinch dried chilli flakes

One thing I like about using the slow cooker is that I can be as disorganised as I like - it doesn't matter when things go in the pot. Also I can take a rest while chopping.

Following getting the food cooking, and realising that I didn't really have time for the shower I'd wanted, I sat and painted my nails. I realised when I was half-way to uni that larp is tomorrow and I don't have any remover. Fail. But the painting itself made me happy. So anyway, I went back to Uni, because I had a 17:15 lecture... except, I'd counted wrong, and got to physics at about 1600, where I proceeded to be sociable for a while, which was good.

I'm completely not talking about my mental stuff. ( How weird. )

And then, at the time when I had a lecture, there was a lecture! Nuclear Physics I, which, from how the 1st lecture was, seems to be really interesting. I might see if I can get a summer project in the Nuclear group - I'll want to do my BSC in Condensed Matter Theory if possible, and I want to get some breadth of projects - I've done one QM modelling in CMT so far, and the BSC project I started but dropped out of was with Irena on Quantum Transport.

I think summer projects are what I have instead of part-time job experience. XD Though, I also have my work experience pre-uni. Need to be all up-to-date and stuff, especially with being a madwoman, else I'll never get employed. And employment is required for disposable income for spending on things like gluten-free bread. (I had a couple of loaves at Steve's house, and I so so miss being able to just MAKE TOAST.)

And then there was the evening, which contained COLD WINTER AIR and a shower so that I have clean hair again, yay, and nomming the curry with some rice and being REALLY FULL from curry, which I made myself did I say, and then internets for like an hour and some until it is Now.

I think sleep should occur soon. Today has been a day full of Doing Things, and tomorrow will also be a Day, that one also being a Day containing LARP, and so more sleep than last night shall be required. Or not-sleep, I guess. Not-sleep tends to work well enough, because it's a bit like sleep.

Current Mood: hyper

I've actually managed quite a few things from the list in the last entry, for such a lathargic start: clothes, ~~washing clothes~~ discovering that the washing machine's water supply has been turned off, effective shopping (the co-op now has trollies, resulting in the shop not being Utter Hell any more - and making me realise that the lack of trollies was a big thing in me deciding to take the bus to Morrisons instead), and cooking!

I'm making stew in the slow cooker I got from Steve's family for Xmas.

Ingredients:

half a packet of '3 for a tenner' casserole beef, browned in oil with the dried herbs
~ quarter of a swede
two potatoes
two carrots
a parsnip
a small red onion, fried a little
a knorr beef stock pot (it's like a gravy cube, but without the thickener or salt, also in jelly format)
dried herbs: quite a lot of rosemary, some thyme, a pinch of sage
spices: paprika, pepper

And I've shredded three cabbage leaves ready to chuck in at the last minute (well, the fourth-to-last minute).

I'm thinking that this is going to result in approximately two portions of food, but I'm not sure. (I'm not going to even try for one portion of food) You get so much more leeway cooking for more people. -_-;;

ETA: Have now also put flapjack in the oven! It contains the usual things, as well as coconut and marshmallows. I shall bring it along to larp tomorrow, if there's any left. XD

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Snow Blind - Black Sabbath

We now have a working shower, and getting to wash my hair after a week of not feels so good! Clean hair, yay! I have ringlets again!

Also I got to the co-op and bought food, including cereal and ready-meals, so that when the idea of food is unwanted, there is an easy thing to start preparing immediately as I want it on a whim, so then it's half prepared and I have to eat it, then. Still will need to pick up veg from a shop with actually stocked shelves, though. Then I can make bolognaise!

There will be larp tomorrow! ...And I still have no idea what I'm doing. XD

I nearly died, it was awesome. XD Also, I think we may have have irrevocably screwed things up, but I think that that just comes along with being adventurers.

Monstering the first two missions was fun, too - sometimes we were pretty much there to get cut down, but dispersed between that was 'Argh, why are there other people here? What are you, adventurers or something?' followed by roleplay, combat, or both. XD Also I got to remember that I had a spell, say it loudly in front of a player who went 'buh?' at me for it. Hee!

And now I am home, have showered briefly (I'll do my hair tomorrow...) and have hot chocolate. I've submitted my downtime, but I think I may have forgotten a bit. Hmm. People ate my brownies, so yay (it means I get the joy of making them (even if it was using a mix - I hate weighing out ingredients, and I even use the 'reducing' method for butter - tere the scales at the amount I want with the full pack on the top, then remove until the pin points to '0'. This can also be done with digital scales that give -ve numbers.), other people get to eat brownies, and I don't make myself sick eating far too much at once.

I'll think about the downtime thing, but must remember that I have late lectures tomorrow (wah, finish at 18:15...). As well as morning lectures. Note to left: bring in laptop and start the rest of my prob qs. I've kinda resolved to hand in QMII early this week, just because. I've done question 7, but question 3 involves algebra and may be a proof.

Current Mood: geeky

I made a spicy-peppery sauce for my pasta today. I am so, so glad that Steve's mum showed me roux! I just boiled up lentils in stock and pepper and garlic, dolloped some of the roux from the freezer into another saucepan and then added the stock-mixture with lots of stirring until it turned into sauce. ^_^

Though, the recipe books are wrong about not heating it while adding, at least with this one (might be different as I used sunflower oil instead of butter, or maybe I didn't heat it hot enough when I cooked the roux). It started to go all bitty when I'd only mixed a little bit in (and it wasn't too fast), so I bubbled it on the hob fr a few seconds and suddenly it looked like it was supposed to.

Also, I think lentils may be, in fact, my favourite food. This may be because we never really got to eat non-meat protein when I was growing up, or just that they are nommy. This also goes for chick-peas.

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Tamar Joshua Rowe

August 2011

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Tamar Joshua Rowe

Entries tagged with cookery

Today!

I have cooked food!

I did exercise today. :)

Om nom nom, scrambled egg on toast!

Pretending

Things to be happy about.

Kitchen organisation and cookery!

Recipes needed!

Takeaway

(no subject)

Cooking!

Better? Or too optimistic?

Not at larp.

Stew!

Okay, so I attempted to make Creme Brulee...

I made curry!